Could this be a joke? Nearly 12 years after 9/11 the senate’s brilliant immigration proposal promises to finally secure the border, implement a system to crack down on expired visas and a mandatory employment verification program nationwide…in five years!

If it wasn’t so scary it would certainly be funny. As we approach the 12th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in the nation’s history, our elected officials are making these seemingly empty promises to once and for all secure our borders with these measures which should have been implemented long ago. This is almost comical.

After duking it out for weeks, the bipartisan group of U.S. Senators crafting an immigration reform bill is ready to announce its plan to the American people. Here are the key points, which are being heavily touted by Florida Republican Marco Rubio, one of the geniuses working on the bill. Border security would finally be tightened in the coming years, the outdated foreign visa system that let several of the 9/11 hijackers remain in the country to plan their attack will be modernized and employers who hire undocumented workers will be punished.

A draft of the bill will include a number of measures to achieve “real border security, including fencing,” Rubio said in a national media interview. “If the Department of Homeland Security does not secure the border, does not meet the metrics of 100 percent awareness [of illegal border crossings] and 90 percent apprehension [of those crossing the border illegally] within in the first five years, then they lose control of the issue,” Rubio explained. “Then it goes to a border commission made up of people that live and have to deal with the border and they will take care of that problem. And it’ll be funded to ensure that that happens.”

Sure sounds like a lot of rambling. Let’s move on to the modernized visa system, which Rubio claims will monitor foreigners that enter with temporary visas but don’t leave when they expire. Government audits have for years exposed how the U.S. loses track of millions of visa over stayers but little has been done to correct the problem. In fact, nearly half of the nation’s estimated 12 million illegal immigrants actually entered the U.S. legally but overstayed their visa, according to a federal report. The new law will have an entry and exit system to track visas, Rubio promises without offering specifics.

The mandatory employment verification system, known as E-Verify, has been floating around for years but it hasn’t been very effective because it’s not consistently enforced. Rubio says this will change under the plan he’s promoting. In fact, he assures that illegal immigration will be discouraged by creating a forbidden job market for undocumented workers. Illegal immigrants simply “wont’ be able to find a job” if they can’t pass the E-Verify check, the senator asserts. It gets better; employers will have a “strong disincentive” to hire illegal aliens because they will finally face consequences for doing so, Rubio says.

Geez, why didn’t anyone think of this before? Promoting these common-sense measures that should have been implemented long ago as a grand immigration reform plan is insulting. Makes you wonder if Rubio has been out in the scorching Florida sun too long, after all he represents the Sunshine State in the Senate.